In Search of the Light | The Washington Post Magazine

I’ve been in Great Smoky Mountains National Park for less than an hour when I’m mistaken for a woodland fairy. Even though I’m here to witness the ethereal phenomenon of synchronous fireflies—a species famed for its ability to flash in unison—the association is surprising since, after a pandemic period of virtual living, I’m feeling more like a haggard dweller of the modern world than an enchanted being of old-world mythology.

It’s not yet noon, and Susan Owen is already on her front porch, singing about pawpaws, North America’s largest edible fruit. And she’s dancing, swooping her arms low, as if she’s harvesting an invisible bounty.

Joey Henson cannot keep his eyes on the road. They’re scanning the mountains along NC Highway 105, searching for stone. Trees are beginning to bloom the varied greens of spring, but it’s still possible to see clear through to the good earth. There, on a far mountainside, he can just make out the contours of a boulder. 

The apprentices have gathered in the apothecary, as they do every morning, trekking from primitive cottages to the common area. From a distance, it ’s hard to tell what country, or even which century, they’re living in. Though there are a handful of buildings on the grounds of Mountain Gardens in Yancey County, there are no roads. To reach the onsite apothecary—where Appalachian and Chinese herbs are transformed into tinctures—you must abandon your vehicle and navigate stony paths. It’s a habitat designed solely for people and plants. 

It’s not uncommon to grow up, as I did, around black-and-white images of family members who came before. Still, as an adult, I’ve come to understand that it isn’t typical for a photograph of a dog to be the most talked-about among them. 

Rob Newman has two guns behind him, a taser in his pocket, and his eyes on a silver truck. He’s noticed something curious: a toolbox with the lock casually hanging open. “What does he think he’s going to put in there later that might be worth something?” Newman says, calling the truck’s tag in to dispatch. 

Ancient creatures of the underworld have been lurking just beyond Jon and Brittany Laing’s cabin all week. In the dark hours of night, while they were sleeping. In the high heat of afternoon, while they lazed on the banks of the New River in Ashe County. But the Laings didn’t know what lived in the water until their site was invaded. 

My body is suspended midair, and it's all I can do to breathe steadily. Everything around me is whitewashed. The padded ceiling and floor have blurred. I'm not consciously twitching a muscle, yet I'm moving. And I'm laughing, uncontrollably, because my mind cannot accept the absurdity of what my body knows to be true: I'm flying. 

Buddha has perfect posture, but I'm awkwardly hunched in the earthen alcove we're sharing. The street lanterns of Yamanouchi, Japan, don't illuminate much, so I'm grateful for the bulbs of this shrine. I've just traveled 6,738 miles—nearly nonstop—but I don't know where to go from here. 

When I think of my grandfather, some scenes linger like the smell of cologne in an empty room. He dedicated his life to military service, and, in retirement, he became a renaissance man of the working class. His scent was all oil cans and sawdust, leather tanner and garage grit. The walls of his home in Salisbury held a collection of traditional bows that we intended to shoot together. Someday. He was willing to teach me. I wanted to learn. But we waited too long. 

It's Sunday morning at Beulahland Bible Church in Macon, Georgia, and the man in the pulpit is preaching to the choir. With 76 members, it's larger than some congregations. Finally, he turns to face the rest of us. Theater lights are blazing. Movie-quality cameras glide through the air on mobile cranes. The choir stands. The crowd stands. Here it comes: The sound of keyboards, drums. Seventy-six voices, rising. One thousand hands, clapping. 

When I tell my 6-year-old son, Archer, that we're going to Canyonlands National Park in Utah, he puts a hand on each cheek and starts screaming: "Candyland? We're going to Candyland?" 

The lawyer was in his mid-20s. He narrowed his eyes, peered at me from behind his cluttered desk and said, "So, why are you quitting?" 

In Boone, people sometimes include a disclaimer when making promises: God willing and the creeks don't rise. Why, you ask? Tonight is your answer. The creeks have been pulled from their banks as if by strange music. They're falling, dancing and drunken, into the South Fork of the New River, which runs just beyond my back door. Nearby, a paved road has already been covered by its currents. My gravel drive—an earthen dam holding a pond—is in danger. And the rains keep coming down. 

My three-year-old son, Archer wants to go buy a gun. Right. Now. We do not have one in our house. I don't know where he has even seen one before, outside of animated films with dubious G-ratings. Because he isn't talking about a water gun. He's talking about the real deal, inspired by the vicious animal attack he's just witnessed. 

It started as a game. A challenge. A riddle. Clark Barlowe's penchant for identifying plants took root because, when he was a child, his father regularly took him into the woods. As they walked the uneven terrain of Caldwell County, Barlowe's father put his hand against tree trunks, prodding: Can you name this one? 

Paranormal investigator Joshua Warren is silhouetted by cloud-shrouded moonlight. The points of his trench coat collar are turned up, two daggers jutting toward Brown Mountain. Though he's just returned from a three-month expedition to the tropics—where he was researching curiosities near the Bermuda Triangle—his skin is impossibly pale. 

I'm standing in a narrow alleyway when a stranger approaches to tell me that he can channel the power of the ocean. Crazy? Maybe. But I'm on the island of Vieques with a similarly far-fetched quest: to swim in a celestial sea. I tell the man, who introduces himself as Charlie the Wavemaster, that the Milky Way will soon crackle and shimmer as it slips through my fingers. Bits of stardust will cling to my hair. 

Dan Lebbin is sitting on a motel patio--in full view of traffic--when he exclaims in horror, "I'm naked!" This is cause for concern, but it can't distract him from the tiny bird flitting from a power line to a tree that's shedding pink tissue-paper petals. He leans forward, squinting, wishing he could get a better look. 

It's unsettling to have a severed, still-warm bull's ear hurtling toward you--something I discovered firsthand--but being the target of a projectile body part during a Spanish bullfight is considered an honor. I learned this cultural tidbit from reading Ernest Hemingway. My journey with the writer began many years ago with a poster, a $3 thrift store find that, at first glance, didn't seem to have anything to do with Hemingway. 

The man sitting next to me on this flight is having a spiritual experience. Actually, he's remembering a spiritual experience, but the wild, alert expression on his face is evocative of someone giving religious testimony. His memory has been sparked by my confession that I am headed to the Mexican state of Michoacan to see millions of monarch butterflies congregate in its mountains. 

My fiancé, Matt, and I are standing on a roadside in Kentucky deciding whether we want an old cast iron sink full of mud. For some, this might be an easy choice. But we are playing the is-it-a-piece-of-junk-or-an-antique-worth-saving game.